Journalists protest against Northcliffe cuts

Journalists working for Northcliffe newspapers, part of Daily Mail & General Trust, are protesting today at planned budget cuts at the group.

NUJ activists are hitting the streets across the country, taking their message to readers in such places as Kent, Bristol, Leicester and Aberdeen, and speaking to MPs and councillors.

The union believes Northcliffe's plans, which involve saving at least £20m and will involve job losses, threaten the quality of regional journalism.

The NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, described the cost-cutting plan as "savage" and said it would lead to worse news for readers.

"Less staff producing more work inevitably means corners will have to be cut and standards will drop," he said.

"The danger there is that local stories will be less well covered; there will be less opportunity for journalists to get out in their patch and more sitting at their desk rewriting press releases.

"This isn't the way to tackle circulation decline. Only by investing in editorial and winning new readers can you maintain and build circulation."

Mr Dear said that Northcliffe was paying consultants "as much as £1,000 a day" while some journalists were paid £33 a day.

Northcliffe announced in June that it was aiming to save at least £20m a year through a two-year restructuring that is designed to capitalise on its £250m investment in IT and printing equipment.

It is likely to close a number of old printing presses and replace them with a new press with greater capacity in north Lincolnshire.

Managing director Michael Pelosi said at the time that redundancies were inevitable, but said the restructuring was aimed at making Northcliffe more efficient to compete with new technologies such as the internet.

Today a spokesman for the company said the restructuring would help Northcliffe serve its readers better over the next 20 to 25 years.

"This is about improving newspapers and reaffirming DMGT's commitment to regional newspapers," the spokesman said.

"They have invested tens of millions of pounds in new presses to provide more print capacity than before, more pagination and more colour."